Featured Domains

New top level domain name company Minds + Machines (MMX) announced today that it will connect its forthcoming .luxe top level domain with Ethereum Name Service.

Ethereum Name Service (ENS) is a sort of “domain names for ethereum asset addresses” system. The idea is somewhat similar to how domain names are easier to remember than IP addresses. Likewise, names are easier to remember for wallet addresses than a long chain of random characters.

ENS has offered people the opportunity to get .eth “domain names” that work for sending funds between wallets. These aren’t official domain names that you can type into a typical browser. (More about these names here.)

The partnership will allow people to get an ICANN-accredited domain name that works with ENS: something.luxe.

The biggest benefit I can see to owning a .luxe domain instead of .eth is the process of registering one. Ethereum Name Service has a needlessly complicated process for acquiring a .eth domain. It’s a multi-step type of auction.

Whether or not ENS ultimately proves successful is still up in the air. People have pumped about $30 million worth of ether into .eth domains, but there’s a catch: .eth domain buyers are allowed to trade in the domain and get their ether back after one year.

As for MMX deciding to use .luxe in this way, I say “why not?” .Luxe wasn’t going to be a home run domain being introduced in 2018. I give it points for creativity and innovation.

Lawsuit alleges that someone made away with $66,000 in fake token presale.

Even if you have a great domain name, people can get confused by other domains that use your brand name. Just ask Orchid Labs, a company creating a decentralized hosting network to avoid censorship.

According to a lawsuit (pdf) the company filed, someone set up a website at Sale-Orchid(dot)com designed to mimic the Orchid.com site. The fake site told people to send Ether in order to participate in a pre-sale of the company’s cryptocurrency tokens.

Orchid is currently in discussions with private individuals about investing, and the perpetrator sent messages to people pointing them to Sale-Orchid.com. Intriguingly, this person sent messages to people who were already in discussions with the company:

To make matters worse the perpetrators are sending e-mail messages out to various people pretending to be Orchid including potential purchasers presently in discussions regarding participation in Orchid’s actual private token sale. Such fake e-mails provide links to the fraudulent website at http://sale-orchid(dot)com.

The court issued a temporary restraining order and the site has been taken down. But it would be pretty simple to set up another site like this.

Once GoDaddy received the TRO it deactivated the domain name and removed the Whois privacy. The Whois now shows the organization to be Orchid Labs and the name Patrick Dietzen. The order didn’t demand the transfer of the name, so I’m curious what the story is here. Maybe someone used fake information in Whois.

There are many ways to invest in cryptocurrency, including buying relevant domain names.

Verisign released its list of top trending words in .com domain name registrations last month. Usually, there are a few related terms in the list. But for last month, they’re almost all related. 9 of the top ten trending keywords are related to cryptocurrency:

Verisign’s trending keywords list represents the terms that had the biggest jump in registrations from one month to the next. While cryptocurrency is still hot, other keywords are more common in absolute numbers.

Sedo’s top public domain name sale this week was CryptoNews.com at €43,000.

This is the latest in a string of cryptocurrency related domain names that have sold. The most storied sale was probably BTC.com for $1 million back in 2014.

Whenever a new technology comes out people rush to buy domain names related to it. Remember the 3D craze and all of the 3D domains people registered?

But crypto domains were an exceptionally good bet because cryptocurrencies have made their owners rich. Things like 3D technology take time to develop and potential buyers for the domains are usually trying to conserve cash, not spend it. But someone who invested in bitcoin, Ethereum and the like are in a different situation. Some of them are playing with “funny money”. A €43,000 domain purchase by someone who invested in bitcoin back at the end December 2011 is the equivalent of €30!

Although that’s really early, even more recent entrants have seen their holdings balloon in value. Someone who bought Ethereum at the beginning of this year has made almost a 30x return.